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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390072">It smells like air salonpas in here</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuddly_Totoro/pseuds/Cuddly_Totoro'>Cuddly_Totoro</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Haikyuu!!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, M/M, The author siMps for her murderer, a love letter for oikawa, author-chan regrets everything, ch402 spoils, i can't believe haikyuu just ended and took my life with it, i took a nap and edited this and I still can't believe Oikawa murdered me, i wrote this in a fever dream, ill edit this maybe after a nap, jk..., um i honestly have not read this through even once so I'm sorry, unless?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:15:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,211</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390072</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuddly_Totoro/pseuds/Cuddly_Totoro</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Following Oikawa upwards, however high he can possibly go</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hinata Shouyou/Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>80</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>It smells like air salonpas in here</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The last chapter of Haikyuu<br/>I-<br/>I legit can’t believe that I just died.<br/>Idk what I’m even writing<br/>A love letter to Oikawa? An ode to the end? Tears and boogers in the form of words?</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>There was something to be said about Argentinian air.</p><p>It smelt nice, objectively. Like how Oikawa knew he looked good, objectively.</p><p>When Oikawa first joined the Argentinian league, following behind Blanco, feeling strangely like a six-foot tall lost puppy, he was both terrified out of his mind and elated over having the knowledge that no one he knew who played volleyball in high school could cross paths with him here, halfway across the world.</p><p>He also knew, objectively, that he was a good setter. Good at blending in with a team, good at teasing them out like strings to their best.</p><p>He was kind of excited to be meeting a new team. Well, he knew, and Blanco had said himself, that there was no way he was going to be a starting player from the get go, but if there was anything Oikawa truly, objectively, subjectively knew, it was that he knew how to claw his way up.</p><p>However high he could go.</p><p>***</p><p>Oikawa knew earlier than most children that he wasn’t a nice person.</p><p>He knew this from watching his neighbour as soon as he learnt he could do something like watch things with his eyes and as soon as he learnt he had a neighbour.</p><p>Anyways,</p><p>Oikawa, even at age three, wanted to go up close to this mythic creature an astronomical six, seven meters from his home and peel him slowly, skin from skin, so that maybe he would be able to find out why Iwa-shu-mi? – <em>I’ll just call you Iwa-chan then! </em>– Iwa-chan was so good at making friends with big people, small people, even bugs and then they could-</p><p>Oikawa wanted to be him.</p><p>Iwaizumi found out in less than a week that his new best friend was pretty nasty. And slightly creepy. And petty. Iwaizumi knew his peculiar neighbour was spiteful before he even knew what it meant. And also got into strange, weirdly intense, episodic obsessions.</p><p>But Tooru – <em>That’s gross, I’m not calling you that</em> – Oikawa, every time he so much as grazed his knee, would cry in a way that made Iwaizumi want to punch him (which he usually did) but also, for some reason (It was weird, weird, weird, weird), made Iwaizumi want shelter and hide him away from the rest of the world.</p><p>Out of convenience, the Oikawa’s and the Iwaizumi’s ferried off their toddlers to each other often. It became a matter of course that the two would grow up together (Iwaizumi liked to think if it as growing towards each other together).</p><p>They ended Oikawa’s long lasting feud against the neighbourhood dog, Iwa-chan peaceably ignoring Oikawa’s demands to execute the poor creature for its crimes against him (namely: barking at him that one time, causing him to fall over, and get dirt on his new alien t-shirt that he would be better off without)</p><p>They caught beetles together. (As in Oikawa would squeal and whine whilst wrapping his much longer and heavier body around Iwaizumi as he did most of the bug catching.)</p><p>The more time they spent together, the more he realised just how annoying Oikawa was. And for some reason, the more annoying and gross he acted, the more people liked the act he was putting up.</p><p>And then Oikawa would turn around and be just like how he was when they first met, when it was only the two of them.</p><p>They learnt how to ride bikes together. They tried baseball and basketball, even swimming.</p><p>Then Oikawa latched onto something that he would never let go of.</p><p>***</p><p>Oikawa always had above average grades in high school. It wasn’t something he particularly cared about, but he did like the idea of being objectively smarter than only-good-for-hitting-volleyballs-really-hard-Ushiwaka or plays-like-an-angry-machine-Kageyama, both of whom he guessed probably had no grasp at all on anything vaguely academic. Oikawa enjoyed being superior to them in any way–</p><p>But he wished that he too could be an all muscles no brains meaty volleyball-head. Someone who could trade thinking for raw talent.</p><p><em>People like them</em>, he often groused, <em>probably never worried about anything in their whole lives.</em></p><p>Oikawa Tooru was not stupid, but he cursed himself for not cramming any more Spanish or English in between the crunch time before Blanco’s sudden announcement that he was returning home to Argentina and the actual flight, on which Oikawa desperately followed. He couldn’t stop asking the flight attendants for more cups of milk until he felt queasy and spent the rest of the flight shifting uneasily in his seat.</p><p>He was half unconscious when they touched down.</p><p>CA San Juan.</p><p>New coach, new player.</p><p>Blanco thought it would be a good idea to meet the team first, so Oikawa, being the suave golden boy of Aoba Johsai that he was, in the face of real, <em>thick</em>, facial hair and professional athletes, tragically stumbled into and murdered his greeting.</p><p> </p><p>Oikawa wanted to strangle himself.</p><p>He just lost his first chance in three years to finally be in a team that didn’t see through his clumsy bravado well enough to ridicule him for recreational purposes on a daily basis.</p><p><em>It’s fine, It’s fine</em>. Just wait until they start hitting your tosses, or watching your serves. His fingers twitched in anticipation. He could already see these players working with him, the connection between them flowing like plasma, toss to spike. They were big players too. Some of them were probably stronger than Ushiwaka. <em>Just you watch</em>, he promised his new team. <em>I’ll show you a setter.</em></p><p>When the team started practise drills, Oikawa eagerly followed them only for Blanco to pull him back.</p><p>“You just got off the plane, Tooru. You should just watch them first.”</p><p>Ah.</p><p>Oikawa pushed the disappointment down. It’s because you only just got off a flight. Your stomach is still killing you from drinking a litre of milk on the flight. You don’t even know all of the player’s names yet.</p><p>But he was finally here. He couldn’t pause for a single moment, from now to forever. The thing behind his shoulder was always waiting to devour him.</p><p>***</p><p>The most incredulous thing, Iwaizumi realised, was how badly he wanted to be Oikawa’s friend despite him ticking off all of the boxes that tick him off. There was that one time he got addicted to spicy pizza flavoured octopus shaped chips, so maybe he was just easily addicted to things that pissed him off.</p><p>They were in middle school and Oikawa was so obsessed with volleyball that Iwaizumi already knew deep in his heart of hearts that Oikawa was gone for life. Iwaizumi loved Oikawa, but Oikawa would <em>die</em> without volleyball, and from watching those grainy movies his parents huddled together for, he knew that he could survive without Oikawa.</p><p>Films always said in black and white and unassuming swipes of red, that even if the person you love will always be looking at something else,</p><p>life goes on.</p><p>***</p><p>“Iwa-chan, are you so desperate for me you couldn’t even wait a whole day to hear my voice again?”</p><p>Iwaizumi hung up.</p><p>“Wha-!” He scrambled to call Iwaizumi back, tap-tapping with callouses harder than fingernails on the screen. <em>I got a smartphone, Iwa-chan! I wouldn’t expect a gorilla like you to know.</em> Making pitiful noises for a full eight seconds until Iwa-chan finally picked up.</p><p>Oikawa turned the phone on speaker and threw it onto his pillow, lighting his room in a soft blue before rolling away.</p><p>“Iwa-chan, you’re so mean!”</p><p>“I’m not mean, you’re stupid. Have you met your team yet? They probably find you completely revolting.”</p><p>“Oh? is my cute Iwa-chan being a tsundere?”</p><p>Iwaizumi hung up.</p><p>Oikawa yelped in indignation. “Again?!”</p><p>But he couldn’t help the fond smile from forming on his face before aggressively tap-tapping once more.</p><p>***</p><p>Watching Oikawa play volleyball made Iwaizumi want to play volleyball.</p><p>He wasn’t sure if Oikawa realised yet himself, but Hajime already knew that volleyball was Oikawa’s life.</p><p>From time to time, Iwaizumi wondered what a dream of his own might look like. But he never really gave it much thought. The future was still far off. Their lives chugged along, as life tended to do.</p><p>But then life met a wall.</p><p>Their third year at Kitagawa.</p><p>Up till now they had been climbing up the first act, and now that they were in the interlude about to launch into the second act, they could only go downwards.</p><p>Kageyama had entered their lives. At first Oikawa was delighted to have a junior who wanted to be a setter as much as he did and who looked up to him as much as he did. But as Kageyama himself began climbing up the slope of Act One of his life at a rate which dwarfed Oikawa’s, Kageyama began to reach beyond him, beyond the interlude, skipping over the second act to an infinite beginning.</p><p>And then Oikawa realised that the tiny twinges his knee made every time he made a jump were not, in fact, imagined. And Oikawa was not the best player in their school anymore. Kageyama was the essence of precision and focus manifested into a human body.</p><p>And this was when the thing that was always behind him was born.</p><p>He’s not good at communicating (<em>yet</em>), Oikawa thought.</p><p>He doesn’t get along with his teammates (<em>yet</em>), Oikawa thought.</p><p>He can’t serve like me (<em>yet</em>), he thought.</p><p>Make peace with that.</p><p> </p><p>***</p><p>The starting setter for CA San Juan was good, objectively.</p><p>Oikawa knew that he was the kind of person who easily forgot important things if there was no one around to remind him of them. Sometimes standing dramatically drenched in the rain or in the shower, Oikawa wondered what in the world he might have turned out to be if not for Hajime.</p><p>It was harder than he thought, having to survive without a conscience or a memory barking into his ears wherever, whenever.</p><p>It only took eighteen or so years, but Oikawa finally began to try to remember important things by himself.</p><p>
  <em>Volleyball is fun.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Overwork is bad.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You have a shitty personality.</em>
</p><p>And his absolute favourite, a phrase that he kept twisted around his every toss and entangled in the crevices of his mind: <em>six who are strong are strong</em>.</p><p>And so the starting setter of CA San Juan was good, but Oikawa liked to think that he had grown, however slowly.</p><p>***</p><p>It wasn’t until he found Hinata Shouyou, of all people, in Brazil, of all places, playing beach volleyball that he realised how truly far from home he was. It also wasn’t until they ate and played together that Oikawa learnt that Hinata was one of those golden people who made the rest of the world fade away out of focus. His high school self would have been horrified at the way he let his rival melt him down into a stupid lump of happy putty.</p><p>Oikawa, strolling around with some of his teammates: Alma, a usually quiet, level headed, almost monk-like libero who was <em>loud</em> on the court, hollering quick-fire Italian (his ‘sexy-language’, whatever that means) receive or miss and Lorenzo, fun to talk to, eager to spike, terrifying to refuse, especially when he wanted to go to a club and Oikawa had to hold onto all of his inhibitions like holding onto family while adrift at sea in fear of going down the slippery slope.</p><p>They were checking out Rio, her delightful salt-spray air and patchwork light and dark: the inky black of the ocean, glittering streetlamps, her blueish shadowed sand, her brightly lit roads.</p><p>Oikawa wasn’t expecting to hear Japanese but it did make sense when the language made itself heard. Of course there were tourists, and he heard there were a few famous restaurants close by, and who wouldn’t want to travel to Brazil? It was, for lack of a better word, impossibly atmospheric.</p><p>Still, Oikawa stared out. Searching. Wanting to know if there was any home to be taken back with him.</p><p>And when he saw him, his jump a thunder crack across the full width of the net,</p><p>Oikawa thought he was <em>drowning</em>.</p><p>Karasuno wasn’t even on the scene before the Kageyama – Karasuno number ten duo snagged Oikawa’s last chance of ever making it to nationals, achieved what Oikawa had yearned for for six years, and left him floundering in the deepest, stillest time of his life he could remember.</p><p>It wasn’t like middle school volleyball, when the gnarled roots of his obsession started sprouting, because no matter the year or loss, he was always practising for next year’s tournaments. Or like his first and second years of high school, when he tried so much harder to keep his head afloat, and win or loss, there was always next year.<br/>The moment the ball dropped on their side of the court, Oikawa –</p><p>Hinata spiked him into the realm of limbo. Into a place where he had to think about what came next. And he was paralysed. Because Oikawa wasn’t a big enough person to be satisfied with what he got. He didn’t have the courage to find happiness where it made him. Oikawa’s family was 4LDK in the suburbs, with hopes to retire maybe ten years earlier than average. His family was not dreams and suffering. He himself was not JAPAN WAKATOSHI. He had not, in all of high school, been invited to the training camps people like Kageyama would get invited to. He was not known.</p><p>The evidence was there and it said YOU ARE GOOD AT VOLLEYBALL BUT A CAREER? REALLY? And it made Oikawa want to hurl and splinter the universe into a million pieces. The universe was maybe a bit big, so Oikawa also considered dropping tiny little Hinata into the toilet and flushing him away or rolling him into his volleyball bag and dumping that off the side of a bridge. Thinking about Kageyama made his head hurt. Thinking about Ushiwaka made him think about how he promised vengeance once again and that made his chest hurt, knowing that there was probably a chance that volleyball might not even be in the picture a few years from now and so personally destroying Ushiwaka might never be.</p><p>The Hinata in front of him, now, was not small enough to flush away, not anymore. He no longer played as an over-eager dog, or as impatiently as a crow. But Oikawa recognised the same easy happiness Hinata exuded and swallowed up during that one year of high school. And despite the crowd he was playing with, the sharp ravenous glint in his eyes hit maybe a little too close to home. They were more similar than Oikawa thought.</p><p>They both played with the hungry thing behind their shoulders.</p><p>So of course, Oikawa, all of this in mind, called out to him, not knowing exactly what it was he was doing.</p><p>“The Great King?!”</p><p>But of course, Hinata just had to be <em>amazing</em>. Not just at volleyball, but at dragging and pushing and pulling people along. Oikawa seethed against how warm his high school nightmare made him feel.</p><p>He waved his teammates a quick goodbye and immediately set about sending a selfie to damn Iwa-chan who he still couldn’t believe betrayed him for Ushiwaka.</p><p>Even against the slightly barbed undercurrent of Oikawa’s questioning - <em>What are you doing here? Beach volleyball? Don’t you think you might forget how to play indoors? - </em>, Hinata was as obliviously cheerful as ever, bouncing around like some strange stroboscopic amalgam of sun and disco ball.</p><p>Oikawa tried his best to resist taking him out to dinner.</p><p>Hinata was just so <em>cute</em>. Without the noise of Karasuno and the comfort of Miyagi, he seemed simultaneously more solid and more fragile. As a fellow terrified second language volleyball fanatic on the same continent, Oikawa understood the feeling. Being this far out at sea had a way of making you both bigger and smaller than you thought you were.</p><p>Hinata was a thrill to take in.</p><p>***</p><p>Iwaizumi was left in want of a reason of why anyone would want to date when everyone started doing it in middle school. It seemed so awkward, so messy, so <em>weird</em>. Why would any guy drop a weekend at his best friend’s house playing video games or playing volleyball or watching stupid alien documentaries just to hang out with a girl you only know from a stock standard locker insert letter and an unoriginal confession coming from the most superficial reasons and –</p><p>Hajime wondered this for many years in short bursts, namely, whenever Oikawa ditched their weekend plans for another girl who would eventually dump him because Oikawa was in love with his sport.</p><p>It wasn’t like he was that bothered by the strange flamingo dance back and forth that went on between Oikawa and pretty girls who happened to fall for his deceiving looks. Iwaizumi just didn’t get it.</p><p>He knew, and he knew that Oikawa knew that volleyball was the only mistress he would ever submit to. Iwaizumi, at this point, never realised the effect this knowledge had on him. He had grown desensitised to the sting from far too early on.</p><p>***</p><p>Chibi-chan asked to play beach volleyball together during dinner.</p><p>Oikawa raised an eyebrow. “Oh? You think you can take me on now?”</p><p>Hinata didn’t cower or make a knee-jerk apology as Oikawa expected, but instead grinned up at him in a way that made him feel both at the summit of the world and also Atlas, bearing its weight.</p><p>“Come on! It’ll be fun!”</p><p>The thought of setting to Hinata, Kageyama’s little ball of light that pulled him out of the abyss, made Oikawa’s stomach churn. There was no refusing him. The way from the restaurant to the beach was electric, brilliantly paved and charged.</p><p>His pulse snagged the sensation of being near Hinata. Oikawa couldn’t help the possessive arm around his shoulder. Hinata, who charged into volleyball so much later than he did but with the same omnivorous hunger. Hinata, who toppled them all one by one all the way to the semifinals of nationals and threw Kageyama forwards like a harpoon onto the world stage. But here in Brazil, Oikawa had him all to himself.</p><p>Oikawa was ecstatic at the idea of setting for Hinata. He wanted Hinata to feel for himself the difference between him and Tobio. To taste it once, and then know forever that Oikawa-Grand-King-Senpai had set to him every single time he spiked a toss from another setter. He wanted Hinata to forever remember the weight of the ball he would give him, to know intimately the kinds of tosses he could have if he –</p><p>The sand had different ideas.</p><p>Oikawa laughed.</p><p>The ball flew away from him on the first serve. His tosses were too far, or too short, or too high, and he even slipped and landed face-first into the sand once.</p><p>It was fun.</p><p>***</p><p>They were in the middle of a practise match when Oikawa found he could name the new big and hollow monster in his heart. Right after a beautiful spike, once that passed like light glancing off mirrors between him and his hitter, Oikawa froze.</p><p> </p><p>He didn’t call out to his hitter before setting to them. This in itself wasn’t that unusual. It happened all the time. Sometimes there was no need to, or no time to, or they wanted to be as unpredictable as possible to their opponents, and they had hand signs for a reason.</p><p>But today marked a year since their last game in the Spring Tournament Prelims. Oikawa’s hands were warm. None of these tosses were for Iwa-chan. Iwa-chan, who he never played without since they discovered volleyball.</p><p>His eyes were warm too.</p><p>Despite their weekly calls, the frequent texts, that gorgeous, beautiful, shocking surprise visit on his birthday,</p><p>He wondered for a split second if Hajime ever thought of him <strike>like this</strike>, then steeled himself back into the game.</p><p>***</p><p>Iwaizumi’s second lesson to him, like all the mantras that he invented to keep Oikawa alive, was simple: <em>Overwork is bad.</em></p><p>But sometimes Oikawa didn’t understand how it could be bad when pain was the best measurement he had to hold up to himself.</p><p>It was always easier when things got hard.</p><p>He struggled to speak in Spanish or English and was painfully aware of how his poor grasp of the languages and thick accent stunted his conversations and communicating during practise. That familiar twinge in his knees led him back to the doors of a sports physiotherapist. When he could barely breathe, when it had been dark out for hours and he was still hitting serves, when he slammed the ball down again and again, it was so much easier to not think.</p><p>About how his apartment was always a little too cold, or about how there were certain players from Miyagi who had already been to the Olympics.</p><p>About the thing still behind him, or the ceiling, always so close but creeping ever closer.</p><p>***</p><p><strike>Chibi-chan</strike> Shouyou understood the panic that fueled Oikawa, maybe even more so than Oikawa did. After all, he was – even after a growth spurt – still so short, and he did only start playing volleyball for real in high school. The Hinata Oikawa first laid his eyes on was a schoolboy who loved volleyball. The Hinata playing volleyball with him right now was someone who built an entire life for the sport, around the sport.</p><p>Oikawa understood that.</p><p>With each game, every connection of the ball, Oikawa sent out a promise, hoping that this too, Hinata would understand.</p><p>***</p><p>A week wasn’t long enough.</p><p>Oikawa left Shouyou in Rio, just a four hour flight away.</p><p>And found that Shouyou was an enthusiastic texter. Oikawa wondered gleefully how Kageyama felt about all this, or maybe how that mysterious Kenma felt about Shouyou’s attachment to yet another setter. When Hinata started talking about his Tokyo friend, and occasionally sharing his videos, Oikawa felt personal offence (and vaguely homicidal) that a setter who made it all the way to Nationals twice didn’t even like the sport.</p><p>Hinata sent him videos of Kageyama’s games. There were even compilations of his best plays, Oikawa ‘discovered’ to his great disgust (whilst pretending that he had not already discovered him and religiously and vengefully watched all of them).</p><p>Oikawa watched videos of Ninja Shouyou on the beach scene, and failed to keep his horror to himself whenever Iwa-chan talked about learning from Ushiwaka’s dad. He laughed at the dumb things Makki and Mattsun sent to the group chat daily. Someone told him to his great amusement that Kyouken-chan was in the same team as Karasuno’s emotionally repressed beanpole. Takeru kept him filled in on all the middle school drama. Takeru’s girlfriend complained to him. His sister ignored him as usual.</p><p>Then Hinata returned to Japan to try out for the V-league. <em>Look, Oikawa-senpai! We played against Atsumu-san at nationals. And this is Bokuto-senpai! He taught me everything! And his spikes are so Gwaah! And Fwah!</em></p><p>(Blanco made an off hand comment about how the national team might want a setter.)</p><p>Hinata got into the team he wanted as a second string player. <em>Atsumu-san offered to practise with me after training! He reminds me of you actually. Every I bring up Kageyama he gets this ‘ick’ face. And Meian-san is so cool! He has children! </em></p><p>Japan was not a country that allowed dual-citizenship.</p><p>He watched a recording of Shouyou’s debut game against Tobio’s team just before going to bed. It was in Sendai Arena, of all places. Life really had a funny way of unfolding. <strike>Oikawa hated Sendai Arena. </strike></p><p>Just as he was about to call Iwa-chan, Iwaizumi called himself.</p><p>They blurted it out at the same time.</p><p>Oikawa fantasised about being on the Black Jackals, crushing the Schweiden Adlers. He sometimes stuck his own face onto Miya Atsumu’s in his mind, only to be faintly disturbed at the thought of having such badly dyed, frizzy clumps of dried straw on his gorgeous head. Oikawa was also faintly impressed by how their scouts fit both of the players he most wanted to defeat into the one team. Hinata called him a few days later, excitedly bumbling through his take on all the plays (they were all either uwahhh! Gwaah! Bam! Or Puwah!)</p><p>“Hey Oikawa-senpai?”</p><p>He couldn’t help but think how there was now a setter who had won against <em>both</em> Ushiwaka and Kageyama.</p><p>“Mm?”</p><p>In the background, Oikawa heard distant sounds of cooking – the clatter of pots, sudden yelps and quite a bit of yelling – “Get your grubby hands out of Kenma’s kitchen, Bokuto!” – “Oho? Who’s <em>Shouyou-kun</em> callin?” – “Why are you still here, Atsumu? You already dropped off the onigiri.” – this voice was recognisably Kodzuken’s. Oikawa approved of him.</p><p>“I want to play in the Olympics with you.”</p><p>Oikawa didn’t quite know how to break it to him.</p><p>He smiled into the phone. “Wouldn’t it be more fun if we played against each other? Just like old times?”</p><p>“But you’re Japanese. I’m Japanese. Don’t we have to be on the same team?”</p><p>“Shouyou-chan, I started applying for citizenship.”</p><p>Hinata was silent. As Kenma’s home seemed to catch on fire or be demolished by Bokuto or something, there was an almost audible click click of the cogs in Hinata’s brain spinning.</p><p>“Eh?”</p><p>“WHAT?” </p><p>***</p><p>Blanco was pretty cruel. Maybe moving countries was easy for him, but Oikawa didn’t –</p><p>Anyways, he was on a phone call with Iwa-chan, and they both blurted something out at the same time.</p><p>Iwa-chan’s voice was trembling with tenderness, and Oikawa’s an unformed prayer.</p><p>“I’m – ”</p><p>***</p><p>There was something to be said about Japanese air.</p><p>***</p><p>And all this has led us to today.</p><p>Today: known to some as the present.</p><p>To Oikawa though, <em>t</em><em>oday</em> was a prophecy fulfilled.</p><p>That was what every step Oikawa has taken today has felt like. Brushing his teeth – a prophecy fulfilled. Drinking his morning tea (using leaves from a Godzilla sized tin of jasmine leaves Iwa-chan got him a few months ago) – a prophecy fulfilled. Breathing – a prophecy fulfilled.</p><p>To play in nationals, to play in Tokyo – that was his dream. He had never been anywhere near Tokyo volleyball, and now he was playing for the world.</p><p>So when they actually entered the building, Oikawa was so on edge and awake he almost felt numb. But he wasn’t jittery. His hands were stable. His body was responsive, warm, lithe, ready to spring into action.</p><p>Then the players were called onto the court.</p><p>When Oikawa spotted Iwaizumi across the court as he knew he would, the pleasant ache squirmed in his chest a little. He gave Iwaizumi a wink and for maybe the first time in his life, Iwaizumi didn’t scowl back at him. There was a smile there, however small and strange.</p><p>They would talk. After the game.</p><p>Oikawa prepared to wave at Shouyou and Tobio too, before seeing the tangerine monster bound towards him from the other side of the arena, completely disregarding any sense of propriety before knocking into him with a hug, to the delight of the cameras flashing around them. Oikawa almost stumbled under the sheer mass of Hinata’s muscles clambering over him like a koala.</p><p>“Oikawa-senpai!” He yelled, excitedly squeezing until Oikawa wondered if Japan’s strategy was to knock out Argentina’s setter before the match even began. But he squeezed back in joy, sending a smug look to Tobio and Atsumu standing aghast within the red clump of the Japanese team, watching Hinata within the clutches of their opponent.</p><p>It was <em>now</em> that Iwa-chan began to scowl, so Oikawa deviously nudged his nose into Hinata’s fluffy hair and breathed it in romantically for good measure.</p><p>It was almost like high school all over again when the game began. He was wearing blue on one side of the net, Ushiwaka and Tobio and Shouyou on the other.</p><p>But it was also not like high school.</p><p>The lights were so bright, the cheers deafening.</p><p>He felt it even now, the imprint of Hajime’s hand digging into his arm, the almost-impact of his hand and helpless, wide-eyes, impressionable little Tobio-chan asking him to teach him how to do a jump serve.</p><p>The ball was an old friend in his hands when he walked to his position.</p><p>Oikawa eyed Ushiwaka, who returned his gaze. His wrist flicked, spinning the ball in a smooth arc above Oikawa’s head before running then flying, then slamming the ball right on the edge of the court.</p><p>Service ace.</p><p>***</p><p>Oikawa sits down for an interview after the game.</p><p>“What advice would you give to yourself when you were younger?”</p><p>Oikawa considers the question, easily slipping into a thoughtful smile, that he knew the ladies loved (that he knew <em>Hajime</em> <em>loved</em>).</p><p>
  <em>Instinct is something you polish?</em>
</p><p>How in the world did he become so miserable during his third year of middle-high? Out of habit, even now, his pulse thrums uneasily thinking of Kageyama. Kageyama and Ushijima. His own mind. Perhaps, even then, even before he was conscious of it – he had wanted a future desperately. A future that he could claim as his unequivocally, that he could love, that would love him back.</p><p>
  <em>Talent is something you make bloom?</em>
</p><p>But Iwa-chan knew. Even back then, when Oikawa didn’t understand why his once ambrosia was now his suffering too, Iwa-chan already knew that Oikawa wanted to play volleyball for the rest of his life.</p><p>
  <em>Never let go of your worthless pride?</em>
</p><p>Oikawa laughs quietly. Those were all things he told himself when he was already much more mature than the crazy middle schooler who wanted just one thing and who was terrified of everything.</p><p>There were a number of things Oikawa could say to his younger self. He opens his mouth.</p><p>“I think I would tell myself to stop being so scared all of the time, but.”</p><p>But.</p><p>
  <em>Volleyball is fun.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Overwork is bad.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You have a shitty personality.</em>
</p><p>He closes his mouth.</p><p>
  <em>Six who are strong are strong.</em>
</p><p>Eating ramen after practise with the team. Buying popsicles winter or summer. Getting brain-freeze time after time. Finding out Makki and Mattsun were terrible people to study with. Playing with a ball on dirt using a piece of string between two uneven poles as a net. The birth of the thing behind his shoulder. Going on dates with girls. Training, training, training. The terror of the abyss. The look in his mother's eyes when he said he was going to Argentina. From walking with Iwa-chan to school, walking home with him from practise, sleeping over, falling asleep in his kotatsu to Iwa-chan’s voice only coming out of a tiny glass and plastic box. Being utterly alone. Tentatively making friends without Iwa-chan as a buffer. Watching Kageyama and Ushiwaka make it to the Olympics.</p><p>Rediscovering joy in a week in Rio.</p><p>Sealing his Japanese passport into memory. Training, training, training.</p><p>Turning around to look the thing in its eyes. Knowing fear, understanding fear. Still fearing fear,</p><p>Not knowing if happiness would be at the end of the long, deep, dark, and choosing to walk it anyways.</p><p>Oikawa laces his fingers together, smiling sheepishly at the interviewer.</p><p>“I kind of like where the advice I’ve gotten all along has taken me.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Goodbye, my paradise</p>
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